In recent news there have been two cases of DNS registrars being 'ordered' to take down domain names and lock them against transfer. The city of London police case is well known. There is also a Pharmacy industry group asserting the 'right' to take down sites without a court order or any form of due process.
What is worrying here is not just the lack of oversight in these particular cases. If these practices become a regular occurrence they are going to be interpreted as an attack and countermeasures will begin to emerge.
We have indeed already seen the emergence of one such countermeasure 'Namecoin' which applies Bitcoin to "replace" the DNS and according to some this also "deprecates" the WebPKI.
The main application for Namecoin appears to be the same as the main application for Bitcoin itself: Enabling the dotcom revolution to finally extend to the provision of recreational pharmaceuticals. But the Namecoin technology if successful would also be used for much more including applications most of us support (dissident speech against authoritarian regimes) and applications none of us support (child abuse, etc.).
At the moment use of Namecoin is restricted to a particular niche and is unlikely to gain widespread acceptance. It is also a technology designed by geeks for geeks in the finest tradition of calling anyone who can't grock it a luser.
But if the principle of due process comes under further attack, we are going to find ourselves in a different domain and the demand for a naming infrastructure that is not exposed to the risk of arbitrary search and seizure will grow.
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